


Corrupted Memory

by perictione (leclairage)



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers to Enemies, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Orion Pax Arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22081777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leclairage/pseuds/perictione
Summary: Orion Pax is gone, but his memories remain.
Relationships: Megatron/Optimus Prime, Megatron/Orion Pax
Comments: 16
Kudos: 166
Collections: Secret Solenoid '19-'20





	Corrupted Memory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rookerrogue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rookerrogue/gifts).



> Set within a few days of the Orion Pax Arc in TFP. The ‘enemies’ part of ‘enemies to lovers to enemies.’
> 
> This is a Secret Solenoid gift for Kay, outlier-roddy on tumblr, who asked for: 
> 
> TFP, Optimus/Megatron: These two idiots being emotionally repressed during a fight, basically doing the whole "Megop = intensity and passion where hate is the other side of the spectrum from love so TECHNICALLY" etc.

“Miss me, Megatron?” Optimus snarled.

There was a roaring in his audials, a sound he finally identified as his emotional circuitry revving in a way it hadn’t for millennia. Each strut and servo hummed with anger. His awareness of the field of battle narrowed almost involuntarily. Nothing but Megatron.

Optimus considered terminating the emotional sequence by force before it consumed his logic processor. He’d gotten rather good at that. He’d gotten rather good at managing the fallout in his circuits afterwards, too. And the less Ratchet knew about that the better. But this had come on too strong, too fast to just cut power to it in his mind. It was almost like battle fever: the consuming parade of endless movement, constant focus, efficient processes. He rarely allowed himself that pleasure either.

This was something different, darker. He found he wanted it very, very badly. Already the wave of anger had subsumed his shame—that awful shame for his own foolishness, for his own awful desires—and covered his despair until it was only a bitter taste instead of a crushing weight. He pushed the limits of his awareness and knew Arcee was behind him. He could trust her with his back. There were Vehicons in the distance, and he’d seen a glimpse of Knock Out’s glistening red plating, but for all of that Megatron was less defended than usual. 

So Optimus gave in.

He allowed the anger to drown him. He had expected to feel out of control—but everything became very clear instead. Deep, rarely indulged selfishness bubbled up, directing him. Processes that had been shunted out of conscious processing for so long consumed his attention.

_How could you do this to me?_

He looked into Megatron’s narrowed optics as he advanced, and for a single moment, despair broke over him, pushing through his circuits like ice. But despair brought with it the memory of betrayal, and anger looped back in. All of it, all that fury, focused attentively on Megatron.

Strangely, he felt almost like he was fighting him for the first time. It was the thousandth time. The ten thousandth time. But like his pain, the tactical analysis felt fresh.

_There is no more mercy in my spark for you._

Trivial details about Megatron’s frame flashed through his processor. Flashes of moments that Orion Pax never deemed important. There was an ancient snapshot of pleasure in the catacombs beneath the arena in Kaon, when he’d been pressed against the wall and discovering the sensitivity just under the edge of Megatron’s upper back plating. Then there was a memory from only days ago, of Megatron removing his fusion cannon in the medbay on the Nemesis using the latches high on his upper arm.

Optimus did not hesitate.

He launched himself into the air, reaching out for Megatron, and as Megatron committed himself to returning the forward motion, stepping into it and bringing up his fusion cannon, Optimus twisted in mid-air, using Megatron’s right arm to leverage himself behind his enemy, falling onto his back. Optimus lost no momentum, rolling up and immediately punching forward, extending the blade in his right arm just underneath that rise of plating on Megatron’s upper back.

The blade juddered over a strong inner layer of armor, kept from going deep into Megatron’s chassis, but Megatron spat static as the sensitive neural connections between his armor plates were severed. He jerked to the left, trying to free his back, and Optimus took the opportunity to pull around and press his fingers into the manual release mechanism for the fusion cannon. One thing to be grateful for from his sojourn in enemy territory. It fell to the ground, and Optimus kicked the hated thing away.

“I see you remember your—nngh—time on the Nemesis, _Prime_ ,” Megatron gritted out, as Optimus twisted the sword, the point pushed against Megatron’s inner armor making a grating whine. 

“Primus handed you a second chance, a chance to start anew, and you threw it away,” Optimus growled. He pulled his opponent up by his neck, servos digging into the edges of plating with vicious strength. “You made me go through it all again,” Optimus spat in Megatron’s audial.

Arching away from the press of the sword, Megatron slowly twisted his mouth into a leer, “I didn’t hear any _complaints_ from Orion at the time.”

At the sound of his voice, anger was almost overthrown by vivid sense memories welling up. Almost. Optimus roared, kicking Megatron away from him with a pede to his lower back.

“You reenacted the end of our relationship!” Optimus shouted, onlining his blasters as Megatron swung to face him. “You _parodied_ your betrayal of our love!”

Behind them, Arcee and Knock Out froze, and disengaged with a wary glance at each other. Cautiously Arcee approached the two combatants. “Optimus, what—“

“ _My_ betrayal? Ha!” Megatron laughed.

Never looking away from Megatron, the Prime aimed his other blaster towards Arcee and Knock Out. “Stay out of this, all of you!”

“But it was nothing so complicated, Prime,” said Megatron, ignoring their subordinates and taking a battle stance. “I only took advantage of a strategic opportunity.”

“And see how spectacularly you failed.” Optimus gestured dismissively. “You couldn’t keep your own lover loyal to the cause for more than two weeks.”

Red optics flattened into glowing slits, and Megatron launched himself forward. Optimus dodged, fast.

He felt intoxicated. After so many millennia, what a gift this was: the uncomplicated thrill of battle. No guilt, no half-repressed longings. Only anger. It was peaceful. The Prime dropped his battle mask as he slid away from Megatron on the follow through. A rotten, vicious smile broke over his face and he laughed.

The Matrix stirred inside him. He could feel an intense…something from it. He ignored it. 

“I find I must thank you for your contributions to the Autobot cause, Megatron,” Optimus said, voice full of sharp edges. Megatron startled, just enough of a hesitation, and almost without thought, Optimus shot out the vulnerable back of his opponent’s knee. Megatron’s leg collapsed under him as he was trying to pivot, leaving his legs tangled together on the ground. Optimus laughed again, an empty sound.

“You see, I finally know,” Optimus said, stalking forward, “that none of this is my fault.” Each of his steps was loose, swaying slightly, relaxed.

Megatron scrambled for footing.

“If you mean the destruction of our planet, that is on your head, Prime!” Megatron attempted to say.

Optimus started to circle him. “I always thought that if I could have convinced you, that if I had said the right thing...somehow I could have left the Council chamber by your side. But that was never possible, was it?”

Moving without warning, Optimus took a potshot with his blaster at the already-sensitized injury on Megatron’s back.

“Prime–“ Megatron cut off with a grunt of pain.

“Let me tell you a secret, _beloved_ ,” Optimus mocked. Distantly, he noticed an incoming comm request. He dismissed the alert. “You could have won! You see, it was not my finding out the truth you had to fear.”

In a sudden rush that reminded Optimus painfully of the arena, Megatron leapt at him from the side. They tumbled hard onto the dirt and rolled. A bizarre imitation of an embrace. Optimus lost control of one of his arms, pinned down, and Megatron spat in his face. 

Optimus laughed again. Even to his own audials, it was an awful sound. Reckless, he left his battlemask down. Still grinning, he said, “Do you know, I wish you had won.”

Megatron’s optics went wide in a flash of light, and he stilled for one shocked moment. 

Optimus punched him in the face. 

Megatron yelled, trying to disengage. “What _happened_ to you?”

Optimus ignored him. “You see, if you had won, my love-sick younger self would have been happy, too.”

Megatron glared at him. “Did the Matrix scramble your processor _again_ , Prime?”

With an angry growl, Optimus flipped them, straddling his opponent and grabbing the back of his head and yanking it back. “Do you really still not get it?” He bared blunt teeth. “If you had not lied to Orion Pax, if you had not lied to me—and do not indulge in that fantasy that we are different people—then I would never have left you.” 

Megatron thrashed, and his claws dug deep into one of Optimus’s thighs, the pain like the sharp, sudden impact of too much high grade. He could feel energon dripping wetly down his leg. Optimus briefly considered caring about the injury, but after all, what did it matter? Megatron had already cut into his spark. Wasn’t everything else trivial?

He leaned closer to Megatron’s face below him, in reach of dangerous fangs. “If you had told me everything at once, if you had told me all the awful things we had done to each other in the missing millennia of my memory… I would have stayed. I wanted so much to trust you.” Optimus’s voice wobbled. He hardly heard himself. “But you never trusted me with who you really were, did you?”

Struggling, Megatron shifted his grip, and scraped sharp, deadly talons down Optimus’s windshield with an awful creak. Optimus didn’t care. 

“You never really trusted me,” he gasped through the pain. 

Megatron frowned in an expression of disbelief. “What are you _doing_ , Prime?”

“Would you stop _calling me that_ ,” Opimus yelled, throwing himself down on Megatron anew. The sudden force of Optimus’s frame bearing down on Megatron’s claws made one of them pierce and crack the windshield of his chest, and his own hand landed hard on Megatron’s neck. Another comm request pinged him. He blocked it. Distantly, he heard someone else shouting. 

“What else am I supposed to fragging call you—” Megatron choked.

“Orion!” He howled. “I am Orion! I have always been _Orion_!”

“No, you aren’t,” was the fierce response. “You are the Prime. You are everything I have always hated—”

“So what! You never really trusted Orion! You never really loved me!”

With a flash of fury and a twist of his hips, Megatron threw Optimus off and followed to pin him down. 

Optimus still just didn’t care. With a cruel tug of his fingers, Optimus tore a cable in Megatron’s neck, just beneath the harsh edge of his cheek guard. Energon splattered on his chest. Nothing really mattered. He kept talking. “I thought you cared about what we had before everything went wrong, but no—no, you mocked it! You made it cheap!”

“What,” Megatron snarled, “Because I took you to my berth?”

“Yes!” Optimus matched him, angry and blind to everything else. “Yes! And—because you hardly bothered trying to keep me there.”

There was a beat of clear, simple silence, like a physical thing between them. 

Then Megatron growled, “Somehow, someway, that curse you carry around in your chest was going to come back to life again, and then, what would have been the point?!”

“Stop hiding behind excuses. The Matrix isn’t what turned me against you, it never was. You did that!”

Megatron laughed. “Oh, and Orion’s unease at seeing the way I ran my ship, the realities of war, the faceless Vehicons around every corner—that little problem just wouldn’t have come up, either, I suppose?”

“I was confused—” Optimus tried, his processor feeling knotted up, upside down. “You wouldn’t tell me anything, you wouldn’t explain—if you would have just—”

Megatron grabbed at Optimus’s jaw with the blunt sides of his claws. 

“You know that isn’t true. You _know_.” And then Megatron smiled. It was just a little lift on one side of his mouth, and a softening around the optics. “The only thing I can fault myself with in this whole affair was not killing you in that cave when I had the chance.”

Optimus took a breath, staring. Megatron...hadn’t killed him. He thought it hadn’t been worth trying to convince Orion. He thought they’d been doomed even from the very beginning, so he just hadn’t bothered. But he still hadn’t killed him. Helpless, confused Orion Pax, looking up at him like the ghost of a memory, and Megatron had held out his hand to him, unable to resist, because—

“You—you—” Optimus said, and then Megatron dragged at his jaw and closed the distance between them until their lips met. The kiss was deep and thorough and burning, and before Optimus was ready, Megatron was pulling away. 

“Goodbye, Orion.” Without pausing, Megatron stood, lept into his transformation sequence, and shot away into the sky. 

Not knowing what he did, Optimus licked his lips, tasting them. 

In moments, the other Autobots were in Optimus’s field of vision. There was concern on their faces, and Optimus finally realized that Ratchet had been repeatedly trying to comm him. He got up shakily, and accepted Bulkhead’s help to walk on his injured leg to the groundbridge. 

He let his battlemask slide back over his face.

He did not look back. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy your gift, Kay!!
> 
> Big thank you to [RHplus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RHplus/works) for betaing this and to [StarlightCaptivator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightCaptivator) for help with the title! I love comments so much, so I will definitely love yours—let me know what you think! Find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/perictione1), and [tumblr](https://perictione.tumblr.com), and [dreamwidth](https://leclairage.dreamwidth.org)!


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